"Pause Before You Post" Assembly

The Well Meaning Basis
The idea that we need to watch what we post online, is valid. We do have a permanent online record of every mistake and every misunderstanding. This means that stupid decisions and things that are said can be held against you in the future, thus damaging your opportunities later in life. They try to demonstrate this to us constantly, and the route they went this time is by bringing in a speaker to talk to us about the subject.

Reasons Why the Message Won't Stick

 * I, like many others at the school, am effectively handcuffed to my social media. From needing Facebook to log into the school wifi, to needing Instagram or Twitter to propagate pictures of our classes, social media and our studies go hand-in-hand.
 * 1) We LOVE social media. Like an abusive relationship, whether it treats us well or not, we keep coming back. Ever consuming.
 * 2) The vocal people are contrarians. They will fight against most topics with their dying breath
 * 3) It happened during a class period, which means people are more focused on their newly gained free time than the actual presentation. I know I was hoping we'd get out early so I'd have free time now that I no longer had to take AP Euro for the day.

The Start of the Show
That entire opening had me flabbergasted. His first words was a reference to "Scary Movie," which hasn't been relevant for longer than many of the audience has been alive. Then he presented a slideshow of just pictures of stuff from 2000-2007. We cheered like howler monkeys. I died a little inside

Where it went from there
Our presenter, Scott, then decided to move onto discussing how much his kids love him and how great a coach he is. Now I don't doubt that he is a great coach, but the flaunting of his credentials makes it seem like he is not being honest.

He says that one of his players is not getting taken because of things he posted online. He went to look himself and found that he truly did not know his player.

The point of this story is obviously that people need to watch what they put onto the internet. The rest of the points of the talk were things that we all have heard in a thousand forms and in a thousand ways. Being that if you are reading this article you were either at the assembly, a student who was out today, or some weirdo who just likes pages about Upstate New York Schools, I'm not going to repeat the points made.

The strangest parts
This talk had some more than strange moments. I will recount them here

Pillow Fight Video
More than once, our speaker felt the need to get the audience to get pumped up and cheering. This video showed a man throwing other people pillows during exam week and engaging in a pillow fight. This video was used to teach the audience...

Wait why did this guy show the video? Is he trying to promote his channel or something? Does he get a cut when new people subscribe? I'm seriously lost on why he did this thing.

Jostens Video
Now I actually know why he showed this one. To advertise Jostens, a company which sells yearbooks and other school supplies. This would seem weird, except that Scott Fitch is a man being paid to advertise this company. He advertises this company to all of Fairport, and gets called out to schools to give talks like these for money. The logo for the company was on every slide, and these were so that he got some good product placement brownie points. It's smart, but transparent

"Be Mean To Me"
Besides seeming borderline masochistic, he used the scene to show his belief that people will not bully you as long as you are nice in return. Now I like the thought, but that kid was absolutely the winner of that issue. She destroyed him out of the gate, and the kindness did absolutely nothing to dissipate it. That kid was awesome.

To Summarize
Do we all have to go to these from now on? I really think that after a certain point we understand the idea, or we never will despite how much we get it drilled into us.

But you know, I'm just a person writing articles about whining. Who cares what I think?